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Precious Cargo
'' |image= |series= |production=40358-037/211 |producer(s)= |story=Rick Berman and Brannon Braga |script=David A. Goodman |director=David Livingston |imdbref=tt0572227 |guests=Padma Lakshmi as Kaitaama, Leland Crooke as Firek Plinn and Scott Klace as Firek Goff |previous_production=Vanishing Point |next_production=The Catwalk |episode=ENT S02E11 |airdate=11 December 2002 |previous_release=Vanishing Point |next_release=Star Trek Nemesis |story_date(s)=12 September 2152 |previous_story=Vanishing Point |next_story=The Catwalk }} =Summary= Firek Goff, the captain of a Retellian cargo vessel, docks and asks Captain Archer for help; a passenger-carrying stasis pod is malfunctioning. Archer then offers Trip's services, while also extending an offer of Enterprise hospitality to both the captain and his brother, Plinn. When Tucker enters the cargo hold inside Goff's ship, he notices a beautiful female alien beneath the stasis canopy. Goff tells him that she is a passenger traveling home from a planet where she was studying medicine. He explains that because his ship can't travel over warp 2.2, she has to be kept in stasis because there is not enough food to support them all. As Tucker starts working on the stasis pod, it begins to fail, and fearing that the occupant will suffocate, he releases her. Tucker is then knocked unconscious by Goff, who then flees from the faster Enterprise by disabling her engines and ionizing its warp trail, but Plinn is left behind. The female passenger, Kaitaama, is initially hostile. However, Tucker uses the translator Ensign Sato left with him, and he learns she is a high-ranking soon-to-be First Monarch being held for ransom. Tucker has a plan for escape, and though she believes that her status will keep her safe, she joins Tucker in a one-man escape pod. Meanwhile, Archer and Sub-Commander T'Pol use a ruse similar to "good cop/bad cop" to persuade Plinn to tell them how to locate Goff's ship. The plan works and Plinn reveals the warp core's signature frequency. After finding an island on the planet, Tucker and Kaitaama soon set up camp in a swamp, and their mutual antipathy eventually gives way to burgeoning sexual tension. But Goff soon locates them using the homing beacon on the escape pod. Tucker and Goff fight until the latter is subdued by Kaitaama, just as an Enterprise rescue team also arrives. Kaitaama is later collected by a battle cruiser from her home world of Krios Prime, leaving an invitation for Tucker to visit her in the future when she is in power. =Errors and Explanations= # When Archer plays his con about the tribunal on the Retellian guy, he angrily declares "I'm not subject to your laws!" Huh? Why would he think that? Granted I have no idea how the 22nd century Retellians looked at law, but the NX-01 is clearly Earth territory. When you are on Earth territory, you are subject to Earth law. We've seen many times that Starfleet in all its various incarnations follows the policy that officers on foreign territory are subject to the laws of that territory. While I grant that it's possible that the Retellians believe otherwise, does it really seem likely that they honestly think they can go onto another species' territory, violate their laws, and then just shrug it off and walk away because the aren't citizens? Maybe the Retellian refuses to recognise NX-01 as an extension of Earth territory. Nit Central # elwood on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 10:37 am: About the lifepod: Why would somebody design that thing like a trashcan, no belts or something like it to get hold on (there's not always a Tucker around) and after landing you need to jump from the top of it. It WAS designed for emergancy use only! # Sparrow47 on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 7:19 pm: This was a very brief thing I noticed and I was wondering if anyone else got a clearer look. After Trip is called down to the docking port (okay, I'm spacing on what these are actually called), we briefly see the hand of whoever opens the airlock. First of all, who is that? The hand just doesn't seem to belong to any of the three people present. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 6:58 am: It’s Docking Port 2. Archer is the one at the controls, so it’s supposed to be him, although when the camera pans from his hand to T’Pol, his head isn’t seen. I didn’t notice anything about particular about his hand. Why can’t it be him? # So Trip has a phenominal learning ability! He needs Hoshi to decode the language that everything on the alien ship is printed in. This is good. But later on he gets everything instantaneously! That's one heck of a learning curve. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 6:58 am: Doesn’t he get everything because he has the translation pattern on that PADD? Sparrow47 on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 11:04 am: Sure, and as long as he has the PADD he's in good shape, but it didn't look like he had it for most of the time, and he certainly didn't have it in the pod. # And why does the prisoner give his stats in metric measurments? LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 6:58 am: My understanding is that aliens speaks in their own language, and the unitran translates it. This includes units of measurement. # There were definite problems with the escape pod launch. First, the pod is launched with the ship at warp, yet somehow manages to spend lots of time outside of the warp field before it crosses out of warp.Brian Fitzgerald on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 12:45 am: I thought they were still inside the warp field when the pod was still moving at warp. remember those warp field diagrams from TNG: the field didn't fit skintight around the ship it was big and extended out a good way beyond the ship. When Trip said they were crossing the subspace threshhold I figured that meant they were exiting the warp field. # Then when it does so, it does so apparently without turning its passengers into one big milkshake. The pod would – logically – be fitted with at least a basic inertial dampening system. # And then we're supposed to think they were less than a day away from this planet? Right. The pod could be fitted with a system to orientate it towards the closest suitable planet, just like the Pod Rimmer uses in the Red Dwarf episode Rimmerworld. # SMT on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 7:20 pm: I'm not entirely clear on why Tucker can speak to Goff in the pod chamber, but has to find his communicator to speak to Katiaama. Whose UT is working for Trip-Goff, and why doesn't it function for Katiaama as well? Were the kidnappers that uninterested in speaking to their victim? LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 6:58 am: Goff and Plinn are Retellian, and Kaitaama is Kriosian. They speak different languages, and the unitran was only programmed for Retellian up til then. While speaking to their victim may have come in handy, the kidnapping could’ve succeeded without, especially if she’s in stasis for most of the time. # Once free in the pod, Trip refers to a system "about 80 million kilometers from here." I won't go into a long discussion about distance scales in space, but suffice it to say our star system is over ten billion kilometers in diameter. If you're 80 million kilometers from a planet in our system, you are IN the system. This could be a small system with a limited number of planets. Besides, the pod could be approaching from outside the orbital plane. # Warp frequency? Oh, geez, they promised the technobabble generator would been turned to 'low' for this series …''The Undesirable Element on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 8:40 pm:'' Just because they decreased the technobabble doesn't mean they eliminated it. They have to use some. If they didn't, they'd end up sounding like the Pakled. ("We look for things that make us go.") And just what is so darn complicated about the term "warp frequency"? Now if Archer wanted to use a magnetic resonance inducer in order to remodulate an anti-proton ionic pulse in order to create a subspace neutrino beam that would instantaneously beam Trip and Katiaama off the planet, then I'd be upset. They needed to have some way to find Trip. I can't think of any better idea. #Katiaama complains that "There's very little dry wood" in their swamp. Has she thought of checking all of those trees around her? The Undesirable Element on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 8:40 pm: Emphasis on "dry" wood. Ever been to a swamp? Not exactly the most dry of places. I'm surprised Katiaama found as much dry wood as she did. And in case you're wondering, it's VERY difficult to start a fire with wet wood.LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 6:58 am: Katiaama doesn’t strike me as the outdoorsy type, or the "enthusiastic about manual labor" type. # roger on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 7:44 pm: The first thing we hear the lady saying is, "Who is Hoshi?" I don't remember Trip mentioning Hoshi, and how would the lady know Hoshi was a person? The translator hadn't kicked in yet. Sparrow47 on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 7:52 pm: The translator hadn't kicked in for Trip yet, but it seemed like Kattima's translator already had (and no one asked for the UT specs... oh well) Also, Trip did mention Hoshi. Right before the UT kicks in, he says, "Where's Hoshi when you need her?" LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 6:58 am: Yes it did. That’s the point at which it did: right before or as Trip said, "Where’s Hoshi when you need her?" From that phrasing, Hoshi is obviously a person. # That warp frequency bit was so lame. It sounds like an obscure bit of data you wouldn't expect anybody but the chief engineer to know. Didn't they do a scan of the vessel when they had the chance? 1) they didn’t feel it was necessary. 2) The aliens could have been offended if Enterprise had scanned their ship without good cause or permission. # Trike on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 3:06 am: Let me get this straight, the aliens have kidnapped a princess, put her in stasis and now are sending out a general distress call!?! What? Do they want Katiaama's people to come and take her back? This could be part of the ransom plan. # In the shuttlepod, Trip refers to his captors as "they," a nice touch because he wouldn't know that Enterprise had captured one of them. But on the surface of the planet, he doesn't think to look for a second alien after the first one is KO'd. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 6:58 am: There really wasn’t a lot of time to. The first thing he wanted to do was find Goff’s weapon, and then Archer, T’Pol and Reed showed up. Presumably, he might’ve thought about where Plinn was, given enough time. Trike on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 12:27 pm: I do think Trip had enough time to wonder about the second alien. Especially with that hokey scene where Archer and the rest surprise Trip while he is bent over in the water. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 1:19 pm: But isn’t that one reason why he was looking for Goff’s weapon? Since Plinn wasn’t around, Trip might have assumed that he and Goff split up in different directions, or that one stayed on the ship while the other went down to the planet. # When the Enterprise chases the cargo vessel, is uses the phase cannons to disable the other ship. Reed reports that one of the vessel's nacelles was hit. That thing has nacelles? LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 6:58 am: It has to have nacelles in order to have warp. Their located in between those large cargo modules are either side of the ship. The only portion of them you can see are their yellow vents on the aft side of the ship. Sparrow47 on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 11:04 am: Hmmm, I dunno, the Borg cubes we saw in TNG didn't seem to have any problem with warp speed. # Humans should have been familiar with the idea of suspended animation during space travel. According to Trek history, it was used on Earth since ... oh, right about now. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 6:58 am: Oh yeah. Since at least 1996, to be exact. Forgot about Space Seed (TOS). # Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 5:10 am: Considering all the gadgets in the cargo bay & the fact that Trip could mess with the internal sensors & he is supposed to be an engineer, I'm surprised he decided to find an escape pod rather than jury rig a booby trap or weapon. And risk doing something that would destroy the ship with him on it! # Sparrow47 on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 11:04 am: Okay, something else I came up with. So, Trip and Kaatima are stuck in this hot, steamy jungle, and wouldn't you know it, but they eventually end up having hot steamy jungle sex. After this, however, they end up putting their clothes back on to go to sleep! There are a couple of ways around this- either they just felt more comfortable with them on (which is possible yet it seems kinda weird), or the scene with the homing beacon wasn't supposed to be on the same night as their, er, encnounter. Actually I find this second idea more plausible simply because their clothes have dried by this time, and as humid as that jungle is, it seems like it would take a while for things to dry.LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, December 12, 2002 - 1:19 pm: This was not my understanding of the scene. Nothing conclusively shows that they had sex. They could’ve made out and stopped at that. # Hans Thielman on Friday, December 13, 2002 - 10:20 am: With no lavatory in the pod, Trip and Katiaama would have had a rather difficult time relieving themselves, and a long one at that. LUIGI NOVI on Friday, December 13, 2002 - 11:47 am: Hans, it's possible that one of the benches had a top that flipped open to reveal a toilet, or that they had tubes, like our astronauts sometimes use. # inblackestnight on Sunday, September 16, 2007 - 3:33 pm: To escape from captivity, Trip has to mess with internal sensors. That's all well and good but once they leave the ship they should've been detected easily. Jesse on Friday, December 12, 2008 - 7:24 pm: I agree. The internal sensors should have only prevented the kidnapper (I can't remember his name) from detecting them as they moved throughout the ship; once the escape pod ejected, the external sensors should have shown the pod leaving the ship. Seniram 10:48, October 23, 2018 (UTC) Perhaps Trip managed to mess with them as well! Category:EpisodesCategory:Enterprise